My copy of EGW arrived today, and it's sure nice to have some new stuff to peruse while under the general plague quarantine.
Like Acquisitions Incorporated, this book carries a black banner at the bottom, identifying it as a collaboration, in this case with Critical Role.
Much of the book's length is a thorough description of the continent of Wildemount on the world of Exandria, where the second CR campaign has mostly taken place. It's divided into four broad regions: The Menagerie Coast, which is governed by a confederation of city-states called the Clovis Concord, the Dwendalian Empire, which is a more traditional feudal society ruled by an emperor king (though there are various organizations within the empire that try to run things behind the scenes,) the lands of Xhorhas, ruled by the Kryn Dynasty, a sort of religiously-backed monarchy of so-called monstrous races like the Drow, and the Greying Wildlands, which are more wild and ungoverned.
There's a long description of organizations and important NPCs (funnily enough, you could consider some of these spoilers as to the alignments of various NPCs from campaign 2, though I think they're playing a more nuanced game with alignment than "chaotic evil" would normally suggest. Also of note, Khary Payton's guest character Shokaste is listed among the NPCs.)
The Gazetteer, which goes through the various locations in Wildemount, is very detailed (don't trust the distance scales on the maps, though, as an error led to cities like Port Damali being thousands of miles across.)
What I love about this section is that just about every location has multiple quick prompts for DMs to build adventures - these are just single sentences like "a coven of sea hags has been secretly sabotaging the docks here" or the like, but it's a great way to allow your players to explore where they want to go and have something ready for them.
There are four 1-3 adventures set in each of the major regions of the continent, each with its own tone and vibe and story to play through.
For character options, there are three new subclasses, all themed around the magical discipline of Dunamancy (think of it as a third branch after divine and arcane magic, rather than a school of magic.) The Echo Knight is a very cool Fighter subclass that allows you to summon a shadowy copy of yourself from an alternate timeline, with lots of really fun shenanigans like swapping positions with your copy and choosing whether you or your copy is making attacks.
Chronurgists and Graviturgists are two Wizard subclasses. The former gives you ways to manipulate time on the battlefield. The latter lets you manipulate mass and gravity.
Additionally, there are various Dunamancy spells. Again, these are not a new school, but they tend to have fairly interesting effects, manipulating space and time.
Another very interesting addition here is the Heroic Chronicle. Given how story-focused Critical Role is, it makes sense that they'd come up with a system for creating a rich backstory for your character, and should help your character both fit into the setting as well as giving the DM plenty of ways to make adventures that will revolve around the players. I haven't read this in depth yet, but I might make a separate post about it.
Additionally, there are some new backgrounds: the Grinner, members of the Golden Grin, who are performers that also secretly fight tyranny and communicate through coded songs, and Volstruckers, who are magical assassins that serve the Cerberus Assembly.
There are also a number of magic items to be found here, and this, I'd say, is some of the most epic content in the book. If you've watched campaign one, you'll remember the Vestiges of Divergence - legendary items that get upgraded over the course of the campaign. While you won't see those particular items here (they might be in the Tal'dorei guide, which was not published through WotC, though I don't have that) there are a number of new Vestiges that are quite interesting, especially several weapons that served the Betrayer Gods and are each inhabited by a fiend. These weapons begin in a Dormant state, and can then be upgraded to Awakened and then Exalted, growing more powerful each time.
Finally, we come to monsters. While not quite as extensive as what you'll find in Ravnica or Eberron, there are still quite a few really cool monsters. I'm particularly enamored with the eldritch "Core Spawn" aberrations. There are also fast-moving Husk Zombies that have a built in contagion mechanic to turn others into zombies (I believe these are the first monsters the party fights in episode one.)
What Wizards and Critical Role have delivered is a very fleshed-out world that could support all manner of campaigns. I will, of course, need to do a deeper read through this, but I'm really enjoying it so far.
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